"TAY" 2007 Obituary

TAY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-06-16 published
BENDER,
RonaldCecil (1946-2007)
Retired Teacher Ottawa Carleton District School Board. 1st recipient
of the Prime Minister's Award for Teaching Excellence in Science,
Technology and Mathematics. Recipient of the University of Waterloo
Descartes Award
Passed away in Ottawa, on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 after a courageous
battle with leukemia. Best friend and husband of Sharon Ann (nee
BOYD) for 37 years. Loving father of Matt (Jennifer
BELLMAN)
and Amy; proud and doting Papa of Callum. Dear brother of Pat
(Jim BARBER,)
Judy
(TimOLAVESON) and Rob. Cherished son-in-law
of Mrs. Velma
DUNN. He will be fondly remembered by his entire
family and his many, many Friends. The family wishes to express
their heartfelt thanks for the exceptional care and compassion
Ron received from Doctor
HUEBSCH, Doctor
TAY, Sheryl
McDIARMID, Gail
MacARTNEY,
HarryHOPKINS, and the staff of both 5 West and the
Intensive Care Unit at the Ottawa General Hospital. Memorial
visitation will be held at McEvoy-Shields Funeral Home, 1411 Hunt
Club Rd (at Albion Rd, one block east of Bank St) on Sunday,
June 17th from 12 noon-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m. and Monday, June 18th
from 9: 30 a.m. until service time in the Chapel at 11 a.m. In
lieu of flowers, the family has requested that a donation be
made in Ron's memory to the University of Ottawa Heart Institute,
Rm H2411, 40 Ruskin St. Ottawa, Ontario K1Y 4W7 or the Ottawa
Regional Cancer Foundation, 503 Smyth Rd. Ottawa, Ontario K1H 9Z9
Condolences may be sent to www.mem.com

TAYG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-12-08 published
RUDAT,
BrendaLouise
Brenda Louise
RUDAT passed away on November 30, 2007 after a
lengthy illness. She will be greatly missed by her mother, Lilian
BAUMAN/BOWMAN and by her loving husband, John. She will be fondly remembered
by her sons Carl and Russell and by her daughter-in-law Melissa.
Brenda adored her granddaughter Alexis and grand_son
TAYG.
Her
loving presence will be sadly missed. She is survived by her
brother Bob
BAUMAN/BOWMAN and her sister Beryl
GEMERT.
She was predeceased
by her sister Carol
McKELLAR.
TheRUDAT family would like to
thank the nurses and staff at the Palliative Care Unit of the
Penetanguishene General Hospital for their kindness and compassion.
Friends and family are invited to attend a Celebration of Brenda's
Life at Nicholls Funeral Home in Midland on Saturday, December 15th
from 2-4 p.m. Cremation has taken place in accordance with Brenda's
wishes. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Canadian
Cancer Society or the Canadian Diabetes Association.

TAYLOR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-08-10 published
One of Canada's last explorers, he mapped vast regions of the
North
Ottawa scientist who spent 35 years working for the Geological
Survey of Canada found rock stardom in the wilderness as a pre-eminent
expert on Precambrian formations
By Alwynne
GWILT,
Page S9
Fred TAILOR/TAYLOR was one of Canada's last explorers. A scientist with
boots and a backpack, he mapped vast areas of the geologically
unknown North to accumulate a motherlode of data about the rocks,
minerals and formations that make up one of the largest and oldest
landmasses on Earth. His maps are still used for exploration
today and some have said he deserves a medal for the amount of
territory he covered in his years of service to the Geological
Survey of Canada.
He hadn't always intended to be a geologist. He grew up in London,
amid the rich, loamy farmlands characteristic of that part of
Ontario, and hankered to be a veterinarian. A child of the Depression,
he was raised in his grandmother Elizabeth's home on Simcoe Street,
where he lived with his English immigrant parents, Samuel and
Lydia. It was a time when few people had jobs and his family
often did without. It was a hardship that would affect Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR
in later years.
By the time the Second World War came around, he was a lean 13-year
old whose height made him look older than he was. In 1942, he
signed up illegally as an underage army recruit, but it was not
until 1945 that he made it overseas. He fought in Holland, Belgium,
Germany and France, an experience he seldom talked about except
for the inexplicable remark that he owed his life to his general.
When peace returned, he was demobilized and given two choices
by the government: a home or an education. Not yet 20 when the
war ended, he thought about where an education might take him.
A house was for older men. In 1946, he applied to veterinary
school at the University of Western Ontario, only to be disappointed.
Apparently, so many former servicemen wanted to be vets that
the school asked him to select a different major. For no particular
reason, he chose geology. The decision changed the course of
his life.
By all accounts, it was a year of major life developments. At
a traditional Saturday-night dance at the local arena, where
boys lined one wall and girls the other wall until someone broke
the ice, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR picked out a 22-year-old employee of an insurance
agency employee named Shirley and asked her to dance. Later that
evening, he walked her home and a romance took root.
In the early years, they bonded over her access to technology:
She had a typewriter; he had essays to write. By 1949, those
key strokes had earned him a degree in geology and a hand in
marriage. After a September wedding, they took off for postgraduate
studies at McGill University in Montreal. It was a time of renewed
poverty. At $90 a month, his government veteran's stipend was
hardly enough to sustain them. Shirley got a job, and they postponed
having children.
He left McGill with a doctorate (although he loathed being addressed
as "Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR") and landed at job with Cominco in Trail, British
ColumbiaThere, the
TAYLORs started their family. Daughter Virginia
was born in a Cranbrook hospital in January, 1954, and son Mark
arrived 11 months later in Ottawa.
By then, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR had accepted a job at the Geological Survey
of Canada. As an expert in Precambrian rock formations, he was
on track to rock stardom. Strong and fit, and with a bent for
exploration, it was his job to go to remote regions, take samples
and create detailed maps -- often of places where none existed.
Each summer began the same way: In June, his children tearfully
waved goodbye and he departed on another dangerous four-month
mission in the North. The bush planes were unsophisticated, the
bears ran rampant and the weather dictated what he and others
in his party would eat that week. (If supplies couldn't get in,
it was oatmeal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.) For Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR,
though, it was all a grand adventure -- if sometimes perilous.
One summer, he was stranded in northern Manitoba with four student
geologists, forgotten by their pilot. Without a radio to contact
the outside world, they were running out of food and living mainly
on fish when he made a bold decision. Selecting one of the students,
he left the others in camp and canoed south along the shore of
Hudson's Bay to Churchill, a 150-kilometre journey that demanded
long days of paddling with little to eat.
It was a long and arduous voyage along a hostile coast that could
be negotiated only in daylight hours. When evening came, they
went ashore and made camp. One night, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR woke up with
the awful realization that he had forgotten about the tide. The
canoe had drifted out and he had to jump in the water and go
after it. When finally they reached Churchill, he went ashore
in such a fury that he stalked into the airplane company office,
found the errant pilot and punched him out.
Over the years, there were few parts of the North that did not
feel the sole of Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR's boots. Some seasons, he and his
team covered a different area every day. In the early years,
that meant the eastern half of Hill Island Lake and Snowbird
Lake in the District of Mackenzie, along with Shethanei Lake
in Manitoba. Called reconnaissance missions, the teams would
break up and explore grids that had been laid out over a simple
map. Each grid square had to be individually detailed, with samples
gathered.
"It was exciting to find new formations that no one had ever
discovered before," said Doctor Hulbert Lee, who first worked with
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR in 1953. "These maps have stood the test of time."
Dr. TAILOR/TAYLOR covered about 22 kilometres a day, returning to camp
near the end of each long Northern evening with a pack full of
rock samples. He'd make dinner out of whatever canned food was
available and pack the next day's lunch before settling down
in a rough tent to write up his notes and sleep. Eventually,
the notes became full-fledged papers that found homes in 65 scholarly
publications between 1956 and 1986.
Perhaps his most important work was a five-year mapping of the
Torngat Mountains on the Labrador Peninsula. Between 1966 and
1971, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR helped run one of the last helicopter reconnaissance
missions in Canada. Transported by Bell 47 G2 helicopters, he
mapped areas by grid division. Pilots would land as close as
possible to a designated grid point, and with the rotor blades
still whirling, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR would jump out and grab a rock sample,
make notes about the area and take a reading of the minerals.
He was then flown to the next grid. Every day, he performed as
many as 50 such traverses. By the end of 1971, the work had led
to the completion of 18 mapping sheets at the 1: 250,000 scale.
The maps are still in use today.
"It sounds like boring work… but it was absolutely necessary
to cover the country," said Richard Herd, the curator of national
collections at the Geological Survey of Canada.
Yet it wasn't all so repetitive. There were encounters with polar
bears, the trading of sugar for soapstone rubbings and some of
the best salmon fishing in the world. One summer in the Torngat
Mountains, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR took a fellow geologist to a secret fishing
hole. "He pointed out a place and the helicopter pilot flew backwards
into the canyon," said Bill Morgan, who worked with Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR
in 1969 and 1972. "No one had ever fished in there. It was just
incredible."
Every autumn, Doctor
TAILOR/TAYLOR returned to Ottawa fed up with eating
canned food. His first order of business would be to eat a fresh
tomato out of the back garden. For the rest of the year, he would
rewrite his notes and review his findings.
Family life was spent coaching his sons' hockey teams, attending
school plays and spending a lot of time with the children.
In 1974, he and his wife divorced after 25 years of marriage.
He bought the family home for himself and continued at Geological
Survey of Canada until 1989. He never threw anything away, a
compulsion that harked back to his days of childhood poverty,
but remained an outdoorsman. He stayed fit by playing tennis,
and tended a large vegetable garden and some giant white and
red-speckled begonias that had been passed down to him from his
grandmother's garden. His eyes never came to rest on another
polar bear, but he was blessed by a pair of falcons that nested
in his backyard.
Fred TAILOR/TAYLOR was born in London, Ontario, on November 11, 1925.
He died in Ottawa on July 3, 2007, of a heart attack after suffering
complications from a rare blood disorder. He was 81. He is survived
by his three children, Virginia, Mark and Craig.